Curveball Comedies:
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| Gary Cooper, Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins in “Design for Living” |
Making Sense
of Nonsense
by Jamie Jobb
A short sprint north of the former pink-flamingoed glory of Miami’s Hialeah Park racetrack – that lushly fabled pari-mutuel attraction which, at first sight, Winston Churchill called “extraordinary!” – stands Hialeah High School, renowned for producing extraordinary thoroughbred athletes.
Indeed, the school’s teams are known throughout The South as The Thoroughbreds.
The list of extraordinary Hialeah High jocks includes NFL Hall-of-Famer Ted Hendricks, World Series MVP Bucky Dent, St. Louis Cardinal Rangel Ravelo, Kansas City Royal Mike Alvarez, Yankee Nestor “Hialeah Kid” Cortes and Ross Jones of the Royals, Mets and Mariners.
Perhaps the most peculiarly unique Thoroughbred Hialeah High ever produced was Charlie Hough, a standout right-hander who over three decades just happened to befuddle many a MLB batter at home plate with his special offering: the notorious knuckleball. Nothing like the standard curveballs teenaged batters were starting to learn to hit, afters years avoiding that verboten pitch in Little League. Hough was well-groomed in the basics of baseball, his dad played third base in the minor leagues!
Before he learned to toss his unpredictable knuckleball, I saw Hough pitch from many a mound of American Legion and high school ballfields all around Miami during my short time there as a sportswriter. Hough learned his specialty pitch in the minors as he was struggling early in his career. It saved his hide, as he later quipped: “No manager really wants a knuckleball pitcher, until he wins 15 in a row.”
After he mastered the pitch, it carried him through 858 games of a 25-year MLB career primarily with the Dodgers and the Texas Rangers. He ranks 38th on the list of career-game leaders, just after fellow knuckler Phil Niekro.
Of course, as any baseball fan knows: a knuckleball is nothing like a screwball which is nothing like a curveball – although all three pitches are prone to wobble the batter.
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The primary difference between a screwball and a knuckleball is pace. Screwballs get timed at freeway speed, around 70 mph. Knuckleballs run slower, fluttering toward home plate at thoroughfare time, 55 mph, which also happens to be the top recorded gallop for a thoroughbred. More tame curveballs get clocked between 65 and 80 mph.
The practical difference between the pitches starts with how the pitcher grips the baseball. A knuckleballer aims his erratic pitch to arrive at home plate with no spin at all, so he grips the ball with the tips of two or three fingers on the threads. From the batter’s point-of-view, the pitcher shows his knuckles above the ball as his arm starts to the deliver it.
Along with Hough and Niekro, famous knucklers are Hoyt Wilhelm, Wilbur Wood and more recently R.A. Dickey. Not a large fraternity. On the other hand, a screwball is an Old School pitch, mastered by Christy “Father of the Screwball” Mathewson, Carl Hubbell, Brent Honeywell, Warren Spahn, Tug McGraw, Juan Marichal, Ralph Terry, Danny Herrera, Hector Santiago, Fernando Valenzuela and the incredible Louis Tiant. More pitchers threw the screwball because it was easier to control due to its spin. A screwballer wanted the ball to wildly rotate, so the grip was tighter on the seams (photo below).
In the early 20th Century, when baseball truly was America’s National Pastime, movies were becoming more popular, so it was no accident that baseball jargon soon began to infiltrate the language of cinematic showmen. And, of course, it’s no accident that everybody’s movie idea starts as “a pitch”.
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Hector Santiago’s screwball grip
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What Is Screwball Comedy?
When movie critics were searching for a term to define a new type of film comedy that arose between the start of The Depression to the aftermath of World War II, they settled on “screwball” because these films tended to run faster than normal knucklehead comedies like The Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy.
New York Giant Carl Hubbell used screwballs in the 1934 All-Star Game to consecutively strike out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons and Joe Cronin – Hall-of-Famers all. Afterward in American slang, the pitching term came to describe anything fast and erratic.
Author Ed Sikov explains it very well in his definitive book, Screwball: Hollywood’s Madcap Romantic Comedies:
“...[B]y the early 1930s ‘screwball’ successfully brought together a number of connotations in a single slang and street-wise term: lunacy, speed, unpredictability, unconventionality, giddiness, drunkenness, flight and adversarial sport.”
In a classic screwball movie, the audience must stay “on its toes” to remain in the moment with the actors on screen because we don’t know which way the story will turn or what-happens-next?
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Under the Knife in 1934
Screwball comedy arose as a genre in response to Hollywood’s Production Code of 1934. It was a time of great wealth and great poverty. Simultaneous extremes greased the wheels of commerce. As Ed Sikov writes:
“The Code was the result of more than a decade of outrage and protest on the part of religious leaders who saw movies and moviemakers leading America’s flocks to perdition. Dirty Hollywood was corrupting America, the moralist cried, and since somebody had to put a stop to it, it might as well be they.”
Sound familiar? Well this is now, but that was then: The Depression, The Code and censorship clamped down so hard that very clever writers had to help moviemakers circumvent ridiculous constraints.
As San Francisco Examiner critic Barbara Shulgasser writes: “From then on, in the movies married couples had to sleep in separate beds. Kisses were strictly timed. Casual sex was verboten. Adultery was shown only in the most negative light and usually punished. Bad Girls went to jail or died giving birth to their illegitimate children. What fun!”
The Code vaguely prohibited “major violations of sex morality” and required that “passion should be so treated that these scenes do not stimulate the baser element.” That situation, of course, got complicated, as Sikov continues:
“… religious figures telling the censors what to do, censors telling filmmakers what not to do, and directors and screenwriters laughing over what they were getting away with. Beginning in 1934, directors and screenwriters who wanted to make romantic comedies were forced to remove every overt suggestion of physical love from a genre that depended on suggestions – of physical love. Little wonder, then, that they created comic characters who found themselves doing verbal and physical cartwheels as a way of dealing with frustrated passions.”
Especially adept at this scripted skulduggery were Broadway writers transplanted onto the West Coast: George S. Kaufman, Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, Preston Sturges – clever playwrights who came to Hollywood for The Talkies. They showed deep urban sensibilities – New York Art Deco v. Midwest Garden Hoe.
So, many screwball comedies were set in New York City, on purpose. Where else would an oddball heiress expect herself to go? That’s where the sophisticated men were – leading men played with comic élan by Cary Grant, William Powell, Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Robert Montgomery, Rex Harrison, John Barrymore, Henry Fonda.
But the spotlight on these films belonged on the women. Because they took it! And, oh, what a soft and sly taking. Elizabeth Kendall in “The Runaway Bride” observes:
“Two people have fallen for each other, and they’re trying to communicate across all that new and confusing emotion. Both of them are struggling to be honest; but it’s the woman who presides over the tone of their exchange, who lays out the psychic space they will dare to occupy and gives them both permission to open up and trust each other.”
Kendall is describing Ginger Roger’s character in “Vivacious Lady” (1937) who portrays not the normal Hollywood dame of the early talkies. This was someone at ease with her own authority. The normal Hollywood woman had “surface glamour, a fatal languor or an obsessive ferocity.” like the women played by Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Gloria Swanson, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis: the serious Studio Stars. Screwball comedy changed those roles, as Kendall notes:
“But the thirties romantic stars – Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert, Myrna Loy, Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Jean Arthur, Carole Lombard, Irene Dunne – stood for, and still stand for, something different: a vibrant sense of character. They look as stylish on the screen as the other movie stars, but they act more untragically sure of themselves. Their thirties roles assigned them to this assurance, along with eccentricity, stubbornness and wit. And having these women in our movie history along with the more fatalistic and doom-eager stars means that we possess an inherited idea of a gracious and prideful femininity.”
Of course, we also have an inherited idea of the man in such circumstances: up against a witty, stubborn, self-assured and crazy dame, who is gracious and prideful as well – Look Out! The screen is ripe for nonsense: Grant up against Hepburn in “Bringing Up Baby”, Barrymore up against Lombard in ”Twentieth Century”, Tracy up against Hepburn in “Adam’s Rib”, Fonda up against Stanwyck in “The Lady Eve” … these were real fights, championship bouts. Sometimes the actual punches were thrown, as in Lombard punching out March in “Nothing Sacred”.
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A Curveball Primer
As used here, “Curveball comedy” has these essential elements:
Good Humor: It was not only funny when it was made over half a century ago, it’s still funny now. That means it’s universally funny, well-written despite limitations imposed by The Great Depression and The Production Code. Screwball comedies were known for snappy dialogue and stunning wit, as are their knuckleball offspring. The kick to these films is how laughs occur quite so unexpectedly. A few contemporary filmmakers – Mike Leigh, David O. Russell and Hal Hartley – have been able to tap into these funny situations with quick zinger lines of yore: “It’s hard to make beds when they’re so full of people.”
Complex Plots: Curveball plots were tangled with mushrooming convolutions that keep audiences on the edge of their wits. Take “Bringing Up Baby” (1938): An absent-minded paleontologist needs a million-dollar grant to reconstruct his dinosaur skeleton before his wedding, but a dizzy madcap heiress, who happens to be daughter of his benefactor, keeps a pet leopard in her New York City apartment before running into to the Connecticut woods with his scientifically-certified bone. Or, how about the plot of “Flirting With Disaster” (1996) which juggles these elements: a weekly “sex date” and an adoption agency, a broken video camera and a flirtation tease, a glass Chinese Zodiac and The Year Of The Rabbit, a big and a small-town Michigan post office, “pup tents” and high-school reunion jealousies, gay marriage and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms, guns on vacation and “the cruel acceptance of a casual invitation”, uranium contamination and B&B telephone rules, Hells Angels and Jerry Garcia, roast “windowpane” quail and “musical tables”, auto insurance and all-white rental cars, a taco stand and a New Mexico U-turn.
Silly Situations: As details from those plots indicate, scenes from these films rely on silly situations to keep an audience on its toes. Preston Sturges’ “The Lady Eve” (1941) and “Hail The Conquering Hero” (1944) offer prime examples of this trait. However, Sturges also could overdo it, take his “Palm Beach Story” (1942): wife leaves penniless inventor husband for Palm Beach and divorce. On train to Florida, she meets Richest Man On Earth, who takes her shopping. Meanwhile, husband also arrives in Palm Beach. He finds wife and richest man, along with his richest sister, Earth’s most available woman. From that point on, the goose is cooked and whomever falls in love with whomever else is not certain until the unbelievable inevitable ending, which involves spontaneous identical twins to resolve this impossible marriage dilemma.
Crazy Characters: The best stories start with great characters who find themselves in silly situations wandering around in complex plots. True screwball comedies are known to provide lots of them who end up in funny predicaments: The scientist using a hat to cover the exposed backside of the heiress-of-his-dreams in “Bringing Up Baby” (1938), A big-time Broadway producer falling in love with – while simultaneously trying to tame – his star actress in “Twentieth Century” (1934), a jazz guitarist getting “inhabited” by the spirit of recently deceased heiress in “All of Me”(1984), a divorced husband believing he’s Tarzan AND King Kong while trying to reconcile with his ex in “Morgan” (1966).
Crazy Families: Good stories become great stories when we get to know the crazy families populated by these crazy characters. In “My Man Godfrey” (1936) William Powell – a gentleman himself – becomes butler for the nutty Bullock family. “You Can’t Take It With You” (1938) is littered with a zany mix of relatively unrelated folks all under one roof, with some hiding in a cellar laboratory. “Arsenic and Old Lace” (1944) houses a literally insane family which calls upon that fact as an integral part of the story.
Crazy Love: Classic Screwball titles foretell crazy love: “My Favorite Wife”, “Hired Wife”, “Daytime Wife”, “Our Wife”, “He Married His Wife”, “Too Many Husbands”, “Are Husbands Necessary?”, “Married Bachelor”, “She Married Her Boss”, “Double Wedding”, “They All Kissed the Bride”, “The Bride Comes Home”, “Bachelor Mother”, “Thirty-Day Princess.” Aggravation enhances true love in these films, as Sikov says: “In screwball comedies, the thornier the relationship the better.” “Love Crazy” (1941) looks at the relationship between husband William Powell who is literally insane for his wife Myrna Loy who’s not sure if he’s faking it. “Nothing Sacred” (1937) examines the relationship between newsman Fredric March and his love-interest, Carole Lombard who ends up socking him in the jaw.
Crazy Wealth: During The Depression, the wealth on display was well beyond fabulous, with a few filthy fools finding themselves Rich As Croesus. Cinderellas and Cinderfellas wandered among wolves and waifs. Journeyman actor Charles Coburn portrayed embarrassingly wealthy overlords in many films, including “Fifth Avenue Girl” (1939) where he’s an unappreciated tycoon at home who invites into his mansion a hungry Ginger Rogers he met on a park bench. In “The Devil and Miss Jones” (1941), Coburn is the richest man on earth who wants to know why his employees are unhappy with their jobs at his department store. In “Bachelor Mother” (1939) he’s another millionaire store owner who helps an employee “in the family way”.
Crazy Masks: Characters in these comedies are not often what they seem. Sometime they simplydon’t know their own minds. They tend to save face behind a mask. In several classic screwball comedies, a masquerade is embedded into the plot. Is Ginger Rogers a girl or a woman in “The Major and The Minor” (1942), is William Powell a butler or a gentleman in “My Man Godfrey” (1936), is Claudette Colbert a baroness or just plain “Eve Peabody” in “Midnight” (1939)?
What feels so effortless in these films was really an enormous undertaking for a writer … and it had to be funny! That many of these films remain funny today after more than a half century is a testament to the writers who chose universal themes embedded in character and unbound by time. By responding strongly to the effects of The Production Code and The Depression, screwball comedy certainly made sense of the nonsense of its time.
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A Classic Screwball Comedy Set-Up
Claudette Colbert propositions Don Ameche in rain-soaked Paris taxi
“Midnight” (1939) written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, directed by Mitch Leisen is a near-perfect screwball comedy. Here’s how Wilder/Brackett set up their story.
EVE PEABODY (Claudette Colbert) arrives in Paris at night. On a train in the rain. Dressed in gold lame gown with small purse and only spare change for a newspaper. She has no baggage.
TIBOR CZERNY (Don Ameche) is a cocky Parisian taxi-driver who meets Eve on the street outside a train station. She needs a ride, but knows she can’t afford it.
EVE: Here’s how things stand: I could have you drive me all around town
and then tell you I left my purse home on the grand piano. There’s no grand piano. No home. The purse? Twenty-five centimes with a hole in it. That’s what’s left of the Peabody stake.
TIBOR: Oh, you have no money, huh?
EVE: That’s right. I need a taxi to find myself a job, and I need a job to pay
for the taxi. No taxi, no job – no job, no soap! But if I do promote one, I’ll pay you twice what the meter says. See (snaps fingers) double or nothing.
TIBOR: You’ll give me the honor of driving you around, while you look for a job,
huh? And for that you’ll pay me double?
EVE: And a great big, dandy tip!
TIBOR: (dubiously) Oh, that sounds like good business.
EVE: What do you say?
Tibor walks around taxi to open door for her,
then stops suddenly.
TIBOR: I say no!
Eve exits taxi, wanders to newsstand in newspaper rain hat.
Tibor changes his mind and now wants to offer her a lift.
With newspaper, Eve shields herself from rain and his taxi.
Tibor almost runs her down to rescue her from the weather.
TIBOR: Get in. Get in!
Eve gets in as shining streets of Paris call out nightclubs, where Eve seeks immediate employment as a blues singer. Unfortunately she knows she has “a bathtub voice”, so her chances are slim.
Tibor doesn’t care. He’s taken a shine to her. However, she is not amused.
When Tibor stops for gas, she again takes a powder. It’s still raining.
Her luck is about to change as she ends up under a polite curbside umbrella, which escorts her through a gilded door. She enters to realize it’s STEPHANIE’s (Hedda Hopper’s) concert for well-heeled friends and neighbors. Eve manages to wiggle her way into a seat next to a man who will change her life, GEORGES FLAMMARION (John Barrymore).
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These pages have previously visited screwball comedy as products of individual auteurs PrestonSturges and Billy Wilder – as well as the more languid later oddball comedies of Hal Hartley and Jean-Luc Godard. Following this essay are four lists of 68 curveball films in chronological order from 1932-2000. Jump to those film reviews with links to streaming the films on line:
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FURTHERMORE
Sikov, Ed. Screwball: Hollywood’s Madcap Romantic Comedies. New York: Crown Books, 1989.
Gearing, Wes D. Screwball Comedy: a Genre of Madcap Romance. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986.
Keverson, William. Hollywood Bedlam: Classic Screwball Comedies. New York City: Citadel Press, 1994.
Harvey, James. Romantic Comedy in Hollywood. Boston: DeCapo Press, 1998.
Cavell, Stanley. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. London: Harvard University Press, 1981.
Weales, Gerald. Canned Goods as Caviar: American Film Comedies of the 1930s. London: University of Chicago Press, 1885.
Kendall, Elizabeth. The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1930s. New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1990.
Sarvady, Andrea. Leading Ladies: the 50 Most Unforgettable Actresses of the Studio Era. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2006.
Bergman, Andrew. We’re In The Money: Depression America and Its Films. New York: NYU Press, 1971.
Durgnat, Raymond. The Crazy Mirror: Hollywood Comedy and the American Image. New York City: Delta Books, 1969.
Mast, Gerald. The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies. London: University of Chicago Press, 1973.
Vieira, Mark A. Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood. New York City: Harry N. Abrams, 1999.
Vieira, Mark A. Forbidden Hollywood: When Sin Ruled the Movies. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2019.
Mathews, Jack. The Battle of Brazil: The Real Story of Terry Gilliam’s Victory over Hollywood. New York: Crown, 1987.
Fo, Dario. The Tricks of the Trade. New York City: Routledge Theater Arts, 1991.
https://wikidiff.com/screwball/knuckleball
https://www.screwballtimes.com/extra-innings/screwball-pitch/
https://www.mlb.com/glossary/pitch-types/screwball
https://thestadiumreviews.com/blogs/info/what-is-a-screwball-pitch/
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/13/magazine/the-mystery-of-the-vanishing-screwball.html
https://www.quora.com/Are-screwball-and-knuckleball-the-same
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/houghch01.shtml
https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/charlie-hough/
https://howtheyplay.com/team-sports/The-Best-Screwball-Pitchers-in-MLB-History
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